


Unwanted Looking-After

by NevillesGran



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Cock Warming, Fake hurt/comfort, Implied Sexual Content, breaking someone to Beholding's bridle, post-episode 158
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2020-12-23 17:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21085310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Peter all but fell out of the Forsaken, which had never happened before. He had also never been seen—worse,knownso intimately. He had never, in his life or worst nightmares, spoken for twenty minutes straight about himself.“Come now, Peter," said Elias. "I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”Peter has lost a bet and just barely survived his encounter with the Archivist. His day gets worse from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I’m just in the mood for Peter Lukas to suffer and for Elias Bouchard to be cruel," I said, after listening to Episode 158 "Panopticon" for the third time.
> 
> "Wait, I'm a writer," I said.

Peter all but fell out of the Forsaken, which had never happened before. He had faded in and out while tossed by a storm at sea, interacting with the crew as little as possible while they worked together against a tempest that did not care whether anyone was on the ship to survive it. He had fallen _ upon _ appearing again in the world of people, bloody from some injury he’d taken before fleeing to Forsaken. He had even once, embarrassingly, tripped on the coffee table just as he returned to his living room.

But he’d never fallen out as though Forsaken itself didn’t want him, paradox of paradoxes. As though the creeping fog and empty hallways, graves, and decks were not his own. 

He had also never been _ seen_—worse, _ known _ so intimately, his every fault and foible uncovered. He had never been _ understood _ by another person. He had never, in his life or worst nightmares, spoken for twenty minutes straight about _ himself_—his childhood, his family, his utter antipathy to both. The exquisite balance between the fear of never seeing another living soul again and the desperate longing for that isolation, and how nice it was to share that point of empty stillness. Or, to share just the fear was fine for other people. Not ecstatic, not horrifically glorious—just really nice.

He has told the Archivist that. He had told the Archivist _ everything_, everything the boy wanted to know, which was all of it. He felt hollowed out, and not in the healthy, bleeds-cold-fog way. He thought he might bleed blood, right now; he was so overhot. Feverish. The only upside was that he’d managed to fall out somewhere away from the Archivist and his Martin, and now he sagged against the cool stone wall of the tunnel and tried to catch his breath. Tried to breath at all. Closed his eyes and thought, if only he could have a moment to _ himself— _

A familiar voice _ tsk_ed above him, and familiar hands dragged him up and slung one arm over a supportive shoulder. 

“Come now, Peter, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.” Elias Bouchard’s words might have been sympathetic, if they weren’t brimming with triumphant glee. “Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable than these damp old tunnels.”

His touch, his tone, the pervasive sense of intimate acquaintance in them _ burned_. In the past, that had been fun—danger to add spice to the alliance, not to mention to the periodic competitive, impersonal sex. But now Peter didn’t feel like he could leave at any moment, leaving Elias alone and unfinished. His skin had been peeled back with questions and any contact was pain.

It was also the only thing keeping Peter on his feet, so for the moment, he let it happen.

“You’ve put on weight,” Elias complained, as they settled into a measured staggering walk. “All the would-be statement-givers you stole—don’t think I didn’t see that.” Peter could _hear_ the malicious smile. “I think it just made Jon hungrier, don’t you?”

Peter kept his mouth closed and his eyes shut, a precise and comfortably passive way to say _fuck you_ to the Head of the Magnus Institute.

“You know, at some point the petulance stops being endearing,” Elias sniped.

But then, mercifully, he fell silent, and simply dragged Peter down a few more tunnels and up a couple flights of stairs, until the light outside Peter’s eyelids said they were somewhere with windows. Probably Elias’s office. Peter may have been played like a whistle and hollowed out like a gourd, but Jonah Magnus was a damn homing pigeon.

The guess was proved true as Elias dropped him unceremoniously into a chair, then promptly went rifling through a desk. 

“Well, at least Martin kept the scheduling up to date.” The shuffling of paper, the click of a few computer keys. “And the grant proposals—oh, well done, getting the Leeworth Foundation application in on time; that one’s always inconvenient.” 

For all the idle monologuing and busywork sounds, his attention was still focused on Peter. The weight of it was tangible, in this office, with the wounds from the Archivist still raw and bared. 

Finally, Elias made a noise of satisfaction, and came around to put something down in front of Peter specifically.

“I’ll go get you something to eat,” he said. He patted Peter on the head as he turned away, as though he were a dog. “Don’t sign that until I get back; it’s—“

Fueled by absolute pique, Peter opened his eyes for the first time since he’d fallen out of the Lonely, grabbed a pen from a nearby holder, and scrawled his name on the first line he saw, and the one below that just to be sure. 

Elias burst out laughing.

It wasn’t a nice laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh at all, which might have been comforting—genuine good humor was never something Peter looked to evoke. But it was very much a laugh _ at _ him, and it reached own and yanked on an instinct for danger that had been temporarily exhausted.

“No. No, no, no.”

He seized the paper he’d just signed. Instead of some donation agreement, it read, very clearly across the top, **Employee Contract**, and then in slightly smaller font below, **The Magnus Institute**. 

“No, no, _ no_—“

“Good lord, Peter” said Elias, hand over his mouth to muffle the last of the giggles. “I didn’t think that would work.”

“Elias!” Peter shoved himself to his feet, rage and a sliver of fear providing support. “This wasn’t part of the bet!”

“No, it’s more of a cheap trick,” said Elias, with no shame and positively ringing delight. “And you fell for it!” His smile was a shark’s. “Jon _ really _ did a number on you, didn’t he. And as usual, it’s up to me to pick up the pieces.” 

“That’s what you think,” Peter snapped, and faded into the Lonely.

Or, he tried to. It was entirely possible to feel alone in company, even in a crowd; even when all and sundry were staring at you. Peter had felt it all his life. But now he couldn’t quite catch the trick of it—there was someone else there, with him, to do the staring. He was wrung dry of his own life story, and all energy besides. He fancied he could feel the Webbish chains of that damned contract fastening around his wrists and ankles, heart and eyes. 

Elias caught him by the elbow and towed him over to the couch, a dignified old leather thing that was surprisingly comfortable, in certain positions. 

Instead of one of those, Elias simply nudged him onto his back, a pillow under his head.

“There, there,” he said conciliatorily. “I’m doing you a favor, you know. If just giving a statement took you this hard, you certainly wouldn’t have survived the Watcher’s Crown, without some claim to protection.”

“Your Archivist isn’t ready for that quite yet,” Peter grumbled—but he let his head sink back on the offered pillow, and closed his eyes out of exhaustion as much as denial.

Elias gave the noncommittal hum of a man who would concede the point for now, but greatly looked forward to not doing so again in the near future.

“Get some rest,” he said, almost gently. “You can have something to eat when you wake up, and we’ll discuss your new duties.”

He patted Peter on the head one more time, because the man _ could not stop _being an ass, then walked away. With the sound of the door clicking shut, he left Peter blessedly, blissfully alone.

Except for the undiminished, unceasing weight of being known.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is officially AU, now.

Peter felt better when he woke up. His sleep had been dreamless, which was...usual. No reason not to expect it. He was still being flayed alive with minute slowness in the gaze of the Ceaseless Watcher, but at least he was well-rested for it. This really was a comfortable couch, And he felt hungry.

“There’s drinks and a sandwich on the side table,” Elias said from the desk. “Have the water before the coffee, for your own sake.”

Peter rolled over to shove his face into the pillow with a groan. He seemed to have acquired a blanket. He pulled it over his head.

“When you’re done acting like a spoiled child, we’ll discuss your new position.”

Peter released one arm from the blanket to flip him off, which seemed eloquent enough for the occasion. 

Normally, he would have won this game. Normally, it wouldn’t have been a question. Peter’s loathing to interact versus Elias’s restraint from either asking a question or showing off how much he knew? Not even worth betting on. 

Peter lasted about an hour, by his count. An hour of the quiet sounds of typing and paperwork, including the occasional exasperated mutter at a password that had been changed for no reason but spite. And watching. Ceaseless, patient, burning, blinding, drilling-into-every-pore watching. Peter thought he might give anything for it to stop.

It didn’t, of course. Not when he sat up, not when he downed the water in one gulp and devoured the sandwich nearly as fast. It was a turkey club from his favorite London deli, a point of familiarity scored long ago and, in this moment, barely a pinprick against the excoriation.

Superficially, Elias continued ignoring him in favor of paperwork, like the world’s bitchiest cat. The window behind him had shown late afternoon when Peter passed out; now it showed early morning. Peter knew the man had a house, but he could just as easily have stayed behind his desk all night, reveling in the fear rising from his return to his place of power. No spider-in-web the Mother of Puppets had ever produced, Peter thought sourly, held a candle to the Head of the Magnus Institute. 

He didn’t look up until Peter spun a chair around to sit leaning over the back, took a swig of coffee (from a heated mug, unironically pleasant), and said as sarcastically as possible, “So, oh mighty beating heart of the Magnus Institute, what has you pounding today?”

Elias made a show of checking his watch. “Waking to work in forty-one minutes? Why, I’ll make a model employee of you yet.”

Peter considering putting on a show of disaffection, but the I-know-you-know-I-know would only make the bastard more smug. So he slouched and glared as he sipped the coffee. 

“What do you want, Elias?”

“For a start, you’ll need to read the Policies & Procedures manual,” Elias said, continuing the joke that only he was enjoying. He slid a thick, stapled packet across the desk, followed by several more papers. “As well as this summary of your duties and likely daily tasks—open to amendment per your demonstrated suitability—and this anti-harassment agreement, which you must then sign.”

“Stop it,” Peter said flatly.

“We take harassment in the workplace very seriously, Peter,” Elias said with an entirely straight face. 

He fetched yet another bundle of papers, this one with numbers and dollar signs. 

“I’ve taken the liberty of opening you a retirement account—redundant to your personal fortune, perhaps, but it’s customary starting at 6 months, and technically you’ve been here for over a year, however unofficially. It really will be minimal, however, because I’m afraid I have to start you at an Assistant position, and thus pay grade—Administrative Assistant, in recognition of your previous post, but it does seem that Martin was doing most of the work more complex than fetching coffee. And, as he’s currently de-isolating down in the Archives—leaning against my Archivist’s leg, as it happens, while Jon reads a statement—”

Peter didn’t flinch at the mention of the Archivist and his _ statements_. He didn’t twitch. He didn’t so much as skip a heartbeat. Elias’s nasty smile widened.

“—the position of Personal Assistant to the Head of the Institute is conveniently open. As I said, you now have a hard copy list of the sort of work I will expect—you should take note of Martin’s current position, actually, with regard to the subsection Discretionary Tasks. Our variant will be less chaste, of course. Other assistive duties will include filing, note-taking, answering the phone…”

“No.” 

“I’m sorry?”

Peter’s stomach churned and he felt exposed and he didn’t even try to meet Elias’s eyes, because he didn’t need to make an angry point. He just needed to get away. 

“I said, no.” He got off the chair and started walking away. “It’s like you said to Martin—I have other allegiances. I’m insulated from any effects of your damn contracts. I’m leaving.”

The door was close. His shoulders hunched under the weight of attention, but he wasn’t stumbling anymore. Elias called something after him, sharp and snide, but Peter was already gone.

<O> <O> <O> <O> <O> 

So was the _ Tundra_. 

It wasn’t gone-gone. It was right where he’d left it in dry-dock. But it was lost. It was unsalvageable. It was crawling with dock workers, customs officials, and a tax officer (and any second, any one of them could turn and see him—)

“You absolute bastard,” Peter breathed, and now the anger was seeping back. But not enough to save his ship; not now, at least. Not when it was covered in prying unwanted company, and he could barely even—

He turned and walked away. 

He kept walking. 

It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, to walk from the docks of London out to rural Kent. Did it take all day, and well into the night? Yes. Was Peter so exhausted that he checked into a roadside motel, sometime around 1am, rather than finally reach his ancestral home? Yes. As night crept in, early as winter drew on, the darkness and chill rejuvenated him enough for that little interaction. Lights came on in houses full of warmth and laughter and here he was alone in the cold, not quite by choice, and he relished it. 

(And he if he felt a prickle on the back of his neck, it was surely just the bitter wind, not the sense of being watched. If he pressed himself deeper into the nearest shadow any time a curtain twitched, as though someone might be looking out, it was as he’d always done. If for a moment he turned and thought a familiar gaunt figure was standing behind him, staring and hungry for more story than Peter had to give—

The night was cold, the fog crept around his ankles, and he was alone. He was completely alone. Just as he wanted.

So he felt himself enough, and exhausted enough but also offended enough by the idea of sleeping in a ditch, to hazard the minimal interaction of a motel clerk. Little could make one feel lonelier, really, than rote conversation backed by the flat, uninterested stare of a slightly cruel customer service agent.

But then the woman broke the script by saying, “Card’s cancelled. Got another?”

“What?” 

“Card’s cancelled,” she repeated slowly and loudly, as though he was an idiot. “Got another? Or cash?”

“Why would it– here, use this one.” He tore another card out of his wallet, too tired to care about any indignity. At least she continued to be utterly uninterested in him as a person as she took it and ran it through her machine.

“Nope,” she said, after the machine beeped angrily, and she’d run it again and it’d beeped angrily again. “Cancelled. Got cash?”

“But– I definitely just got that one renewed!” Peter sputtered.

Now her attention was almost real. “Hey, you just lost your job or something?” Real and _ sympathetic_; it rubbed him raw. “Sometimes the banks move fast like that. I can swing you a discount for a couple hours, if you pay in cash and catch the first bus out.”

_ I just got a new one, actually_, was at the bitter tip of Peter’s tongue, as he thought about the contract he’d signed yesterday—only yesterday?—and how the very essence of his family was cutting out people who didn’t belong.

“No,” he said shortly, and walked away again. He felt her eyes on the back of his neck until he was out in the cold.

<O> <O> <O> <O> <O> 

It took him nearly a week to find Mooreland House.

A week of walking, the same roads over and over until he thought maybe the fog that crept in each night, and dissipated so slowly each morning, was Distortion’s instead of Forsaken’s. A week of fast food meals and cheap motels—and, when his cash ran out, gas stations and worse, and finding that ditch after all. A weak until the cold crept right into his bones, deeper than it ever had before, and he started to genuinely yearn for the lights and laughter of the houses he passed. There, was warmth. There was companionship. There was—

(people who would _ stare _ at him, more than they did already; people who would see him and touch him and _ know _ him, know how much he shivered and how much he wept and maybe even how to make him smile. People who were the source of the eternal prickle on the back of his neck—just other people, their presence; not the way his sleep grew restless with figments, and then full-fledged dreams: wandering the same streets, cold and silent; seated in his cabin on the _ Tundra_, no one for hundreds of miles save his isolated, empty-hearted crew; the too-wide, too-tall hallways of home that gradually lost the sound of other children in favor of drafts and portraits that _ stared— _

There was always someone staring. There was always someone with him, not stalking but simply _ there_, _ watching_. He could never catch it when he was awake, no matter how quickly he snapped his head around. Watching as Peter stumbled through the emptiness, watching as he slowly gave up on everything else, watching as he started to think that maybe this was his apotheosis turned inward. The terror grew: maybe at last he was really, truly, hopelessly—)

He nearly tripped on the steps of Mooreland House, up yet another long driveway into enshrouding fog. This one, though: this one was home. 

He knew it because no one greeted him at the door. No one offered him a hand, a supportive shoulder, as he wavered in the ancient, lush foyer, weak with hunger and exhausted to boot. He didn’t see a single soul as he staggered through the austere halls—not a speck of dust to be seen, but not a single indication that the house was occupied, either.

He wanted little more than to collapse, but he didn’t go to his old bedroom, out of place though the old decorations made him feel. He didn’t go to any bedroom. He went down to the cellar with his eyes closed, barely familiar enough to make his way by touch. With the key still around his neck, tucked beside the bosun’s whistle, he opened the door there, and descended further yet.

There, at last, there was no one else. There could never be anyone else here, in the deepest grip of the only god whose presence was defined by its absence. 

Peter drifted for a while, in the euphoric isolation. The freedom was absolute. Trick him, bind him, track him down in the domain that should have been his and tear him inside-out...there was more than one way to be utterly, terribly _ alone_, and there was nothing to fear, in the empty Forsaken. Nothing to feel. 

Until he opened his eyes, and the Archivist stared back at him.

“No!” Peter scrambled backward, through fog that whipped and tore at his skin.

“I see you, Peter Lukas. I _ know _ you.” His voice was the Archivist’s, Elias’s, a man offering an umbrella a lifetime ago. 

“_No!_” Peter’s back hit a wall and he looked desperately for an escape—but everywhere he looked there was the same dark gaze looking back, inexorable as a black hole. “You can’t– you can’t be here!”

“I told you, I can find you wherever you go.” He advanced with a ravenous smile. “Do you want to tell me another story?”

“No, no, no,” Peter begged, then managed to snap his mouth shut. He crumpled into a ball and buried his head in his knees, eyes squeezed closed. But he felt something in him snap—or possibly grow taut.

No one else spoke. No one came for him. When he finally opened his eyes again (he didn’t want to know but he didn’t want to _ not _ know; he couldn’t stand the not knowing) the room was empty. A door and him and nothing else.

But it was just a room, and it was just a door. And just him, with a frozen ache where nothingness should be.

No one kicked him out, of course. That would mean interaction, and worse, confrontation. There was even some food to scavenge from the kitchen, put away in a way that made clear that nobody cared that he was there, except to not want him. There were beds with enough feathers and soft sheets to make even the nightmares more tolerable.

After another week, Peter started to feel sick. He was already unhealthily hollowed out, or rather, refilled, and he had never lost the fever. But a different tenor to it grew, and eventually it overwhelmed his spite.

A cab ride later, he stumbled into the Magnus Institute nearly as weakly as he had into Mooreland Hall. (He would never go back there; he knew it, now. He would never be allowed to find it again, much less enter.)

The Archivist saw him first, of course. But Peter looked up and saw him a second later, met those dark, hungry eyes from across the lobby.

He felt healthier just to be back inside the Institute. But he couldn’t do anything but lean against the door and watch, as the entity known as Jonathan Sims stalked toward him. 

“What are _ you _ doing here?”

_ Irresistible _ wasn’t the right word, because it implied that there was something left in Peter that could resist. It was pain like picking at a fresh scab: excoriating and raw, and somehow terribly satisfying. 

“I work here, now. Administrative Assistant to the Head.” 

Whatever remained of Peter’s heart was turned inside-out as the Archivist’s gaze raked him. He couldn’t move, much less look away. He could barely even think of it.

Finally the Archivist turned away with a sneer of disgust. “Just stay out of my Archives. And stay away from Martin.”

Peter nodded. The Archivist was already walking away, but there was no doubt that he saw. That he _ knew_.

Once he was out of sight, Peter stumbled like a drunken man, ran like a prey creature, up to Elias’s office. Slamming the door behind him did nothing to alleviate the sense of being watched (of course it didn’t, here in the pupil of the Eye.) But Elias pushed his chair back without a word, as though he knew what Peter needed (of course he did), and the space under his desk was. Better. It was dark, at least, and hidden from view on three sides. 

“Welcome back, Peter,” Elias crooned, and hid part of the fourth side as he retook his seat. His hand reached down to scratch Peter’s scalp in just the way Peter liked. The familiarity was a terrible close cousin to comforting.

“I take it that you’re ready for work, then?”

Exhausted, defeated, and above all (he told himself, with one last, desperate glimmer of rancor) lacking any other space to move, Peter rested his head against Elias’s knee. 

Elias didn’t pretend to wait for a clearer answer. He simply hooked two fingers under Peter’s chin and tugged him up and forward, onto his knees with his face firmly on Elias’s lap. His lips firmly over the bulge pressing against the zipper of Elias’s trousers.

“Get to it, then,” Elias said, that shark-like grin audible. “Discretionary Tasks, as I said.” His hands returned to the computer keys, leaving Peter almost something like alone. “You may take me out with your hands, but after that mouth only. No sucking or biting, and remember: the longer you stay still and quiet, the longer you get to hide under the desk.”

Peter closed his eyes, as though that would help, and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Someday**, I'm going to overcome whatever puritanical mental block stops me from writing actual porn. Meanwhile, please accept my apologies and this fade-to-black cockwarming.


End file.
